NEW PERMANENT REPRESENTATIVE OF LEBANON PRESENTS CREDENTIALS

Biographical Note

NEW PERMANENT REPRESENTATIVE OF LEBANON PRESENTS CREDENTIALS

(Based on information received from the Protocol and Liaison Service.)

The new Permanent Representative of Lebanon to the United Nations, Sami Kronfol, presented his credentials to Secretary-General Kofi Annan today.

From December 2000 until the present, Mr. Kronfol served as his country’s Ambassador to Egypt, and before that, in 1999-2000, as National Coordinator for the European-Mediterranean Partnership at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beirut.  From 1994 to 1999, he was Lebanon’s Permanent Representative to United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Paris, France, where he simultaneously represented his country at the French-Speaking Community Agency.

Mr. Kronfol joined his country’s Foreign Service in 1965 and received his first foreign assignment in 1967, when he began work at Lebanon’s Embassy in Saudi Arabia.  Over the years, he served in increasingly responsible positions in Russia (1969-1971); Kuwait (1971-1972); Morocco (1972-1977); France (1979-1983); and Tunisia (1983-1985).  During the last of those assignments, he also served as Lebanon’s Ambassador to the League of Arab States. 

For two years upon his return to Lebanon in 1985, he worked as Chief of the Arab Affairs Division at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and in 1987, he joined Lebanon’s Embassy in Morocco, where he stayed through 1994.  In 1992, he was promoted to the rank of Ambassador.

Born in Beirut in 1941, Mr. Kronfol is married, with three children.  He has master’s degrees in Law and Economy, as well as Political Sciences from St. Joseph University in Beirut.  He graduated in 1965 from the National Institute for Public Administration and Development.

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